Free NaGeira by Paul Butler

started drying them on the cloth provided. Before I had quite finished, she entered again.
    “Come,” she said. “You are to follow me downstairs into a carriage which is waiting.”
    She was so decided in manner, her dark eyes so fixed, that I took a couple of steps to the door at her command. Then I forced myself to halt. “Where is my mother?” I asked, my lip stiff and, for the moment, not trembling. “I need to see her.”
    I was expecting a rebuke, but instead the woman looked at me mildly, her eyebrows raised. “She is at the place to which you are bound. We must hurry.”
    I had no idea where “the place” referred to could be, but I was happy to rush downstairs with the woman now. Everything would be explained, I thought, all the silence and isolation of the last day and night. Perhaps I would join my mother in one of the London parklands. She might rebuke me at first, or she might have forgiven me already. But soon everything would be as normal and we might walk together, taking in the waters and the meadows.
    On the ground floor the servants were still shifting furniture after yesterday’s arrival. Two of Mr. Ridley’s staff were heaving my mother’s heavy oak sideboard in through the hallway. Another three were fixing a place on the wall for her grandest mirror. My gaze swooped eagle-like around the hallway, into the dining hall, for a glimpse of Thomas Ridley, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was with Mother too.
    The white-faced woman led me swiftly outside and into a small coach. We began to move instantly I sat down. We weresilent as the carriage rumbled along, its springs creaking and groaning. It turned one way, then another, passed markets reeking of fish and horse droppings, became trapped in a crowd of ragged-looking people, then lurched forward again at great speed. I glimpsed the Thames, blue and glistening in the sunshine. As we turned once more, I saw from a distance the great white walls of the Tower of London, the flag of St. George flying high from the mast. We came into the shadow of trees. Dark, high walls skimmed by the carriage window. We turned sharply one last time and flew through a rugged stone archway and into a courtyard. There we came to a stop. The white-faced woman alighted first; I followed. Looming over all sides of the enclosed courtyard was a lofty, grey-brick building, its walls as high as the trees I had known in the Pale. Something shrank and coiled inside me as the woman tugged me gently by the elbow and bade me follow her through the entranceway. As we hurried along a dim, high-ceilinged hallway, I could hear from somewhere far beneath our echoing footsteps a distant sound of coughing. A thickset man passed us, a circle of large keys hanging from his belt. He ignored us as though we were spirits, quite invisible to him. I glanced over my shoulder as he unlocked an arched doorway and disappeared, closing it after him with a great echoing clunk. We turned a corner into an identical corridor, and at last, the white-faced woman stopped at a narrow door and knocked. I could barely hear a reply, but she pushed open the door and gestured me to go in first.
    I remember the room, the smell of wax polish and oak, the creaking of leather chairs. Mother was sitting, pale and round-shouldered, as if she were in mourning again, though I knew noone could have died. Mr Ridley was right there beside her. He murmured some comforting phrase to her while the white-faced servant led me to the end of the long table at which they sat. She placed her bony hands on my shoulders, like a sculptor getting a measure of its stone. I knew the meaning of her touch: I should remain standing in the place she had put me.
    I watched my mother intently, waiting for her to glance in my direction so I could fathom her mood. It had been so long since she, or anyone else, had properly acknowledged my presence I was beginning to feel as if I were indeed a ghost. Opposite Mr. Ridley and my mother